Anthony Hiss

Talk story about the N.Y.C. Transit Authority's New Technology subway trains, now undergoing trial runs for invited passengers. One of the two trains the writer rode was built by the Canadian company Bombardier, with seats designed by Melissa Feldman.

Talk story about a conversation with Robert D. Yaro, executive director of the Regional Plan Association, on the day of N.Y.C.'s mayoral election. The R.P.A. is a think tank founded in the 1920s. It helped plan much of what brought N.Y.C. into the 20th century. Writer spoke with him at a Japanese shabu-shabu restaurant. Yaro talks about N.Y.C.'s negative response to the recession: "President Ford told New York to drop dead, but basically we've been following his advice ever since." It will take the city 11 years to recover the million jobs it's lost in the last 4 years. Yaro talks about more positive responses to the global recession in London, Paris, Hong Kong. The move for Staten Island to secede from the city is indicative of the current mood. Yet the economy was ignored in the mayoral campaign.

Talk story about the new street lights on the block of West Fortieth Street between Fifth and Sixth, just south of the New York Public Library. The new cast-iron lampposts are dark green, and the light they cast is not yellow, but a bluey-white. It's this white light that has changed everything. Howard Brandston, a lighting designer who has carried the white-light torch for years, helped to raise the money for 40th Street's new, beckoning lights. And thanks to his shining example, all of Sixth Avenue could get white lights next year, and after that 150 other midtown blocks. One simple change can break the spell of yellow light and let New Yorkers step out and savor the evening.

Talk story about the ICE Train (short for German InterCityExpress train), a high-speed train that will be making test runs between N.Y. and Washington this fall as a substitute Metroliner for Amtrak. It can go 250 mph. Germany has 60 ICE Trains on 6 routes; by 1997, U.S. is expected to have 26 high-speed trains going between N.Y. and Boston, and N.Y. and Washington. These will be either U.S.-made versions of the ICE Train or of its rival, the Swedish X2000. Describes the luxurious interior and smooth ride of the ICE Train. Writer was the only passenger on a special, low-speed run.

Talk story about people in NYC who get repeated wrong-number calls. Amy Tonsits of Brooklyn Heights has recorded a message on her answering machine that says, "This is not the Transit Authority. This is not Pizza Hut. This is not the Board of Education…" The New Yorker regularly fields calls for Bisonic, Meyrowitz Opticians, Billboard, the Police Department, pension bureau, and the Algonquin Hotel. A mid-Manhattan dentist's office has been getting calls for Lutece for the past nine years.

OUR LOCAL CORRESPONDENTS about children's playgrounds in New York City. Writer visits playgrounds in Central Park at 85th Street; the Hudson River Park at Battery City Park; at PS 197 in Harlem; at the UN International School; at the Playground for All Children; and at HELP 1, a transitional-housing project. Describes the playgrounds, which are innovative.

ANNALS OF EDUCATION about the removal of controversial school chancellor Joe Fernandez. In September of 1989, the New York City Board of Education was so desperate to bring Joseph A. Fernandez north from Miami to save the city's public schools that it offered him a salary of $195,000 a year–far more than the mayor, the governor, or any other public official in the state has ever made. In February, just three years after the best man for the job took over the biggest public-school system in the country, a bitterly divided New York City Board of Education, bowing, it seemed, to what local newspapers called a sudden "firestorm of hostility" against Fernandez, voted four to three to dismiss him at the end of June. What went so quickly and horribly wrong for Fernandez? Reasons listed include his temperament, described as aggressive, overbearing, and unable to seek compromise; his short-sightedness in not cultivating friends in the school system who could find ways of getting his ideas into the classrooms; his battle to make condoms available to highschool students to help fight AIDS; his plan to teach grade-schoolers about how people catch HIV, his new multi-cultural curriculum, called Children of the Rainbow, which celebrates the various races, groups, and family situations in New York, including, most controversially, children being raised by gay & lesbian couples; and his autobiography, "Tales Out of School." Tells about his philosophy of education, which is moving away from what he calls "the factory-school."

STORYBOARD describing the efforts of Maurice Sendak to start a children's-theatre production company called the Night Kitchen, showing drawings from the first production, a musical by Sendak and Carole King called "Really Rosie."

PERSONAL HISTORY about the writer's father, Alger Hiss. On Oct. 29, at the Algonquin Hotel, there was a news conference to present a videotape of Col. -Gen. Dmitry Antonovich Volkogonov, chairman of the Supreme Council commission on K.G.B. and military-intelligence archives of the former Soviet Union, stating that a review of those archives shows "Alger Hiss was not ever or anywhere recruited as an agent of the intelligence services of the Soviet Union." The general then says, "Tell Mr. Alger Hiss that the heavy weight should be lifted from his heart." Recounts Alger's distinguished career at Harvard, as clerk to Oliver Wendell Holmes at the Supreme Court, in FDR's State Dept., & as secretary-general of the United Nations organizing conference. In 1948, Whittaker Chambers accused Alger of being a Communist spy. Convicted of perjury, Alger spent 3 years in prison at Lewisburg, Pa. Writer quotes from the letters he received from his father during this period. Now 38, Alger never gave up hope that he would clear his name. He has been readmitted to the bar in Mass., & serves on the board of a small Ariz. foundation. Two films have been made about his life: a PBS docudrama, in which Edward Harrmann played Alger, & "The Trials of Alger Hiss," a documentary by John Lowenthal, the man who this year sought out Gen. Volkogonov & videotaped his statement.